Chapter 14 of your text book addresses policy maters related to incarceration and lists agencies and organizations dedicated to helping incarcerated individuals who may have been wrongly convicted. These agencies and organizations play a vital role in the pursuit of justice and the protection of human rights. These groups, often comprised of legal experts, activists, and volunteers, work tirelessly to identify cases of potential wrongful conviction and advocate for the exoneration of innocent individuals.
Jansson, B. S. (2019). Social welfare policy and advocacy: Advancing social justice through eight policy sectors. SAGE Publications.
With regards to this, chapter 14 lists the following organizations:
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Amnesty International
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
African Americans.National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
National Legal Aid and Defender Association
Pew Research Center
The Sentencing Project
The Vera Institute of Justice
Other than those listed above, please tell us about an organizations that helps those in-justly imprisoned.
14 BECOMING POLICY ADVOCATES IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SECTOR
This chapter was coauthored by Gretchen Heidemann, Ph.D., and Elain Sanchez Wilson, MPP Note:
Gretchen Heidemann, Ph.D., and Elain Sanchez Wilson, MPP, made invaluable contributions to this
chapter in this books first edition. Bruce Jansson was the sole author of the second edition, editing and updating contributions from each original contributor. Learning Objectives In this chapter you will learn
to: 1. Understand the evolution of the health care system in the United States 2. Understand how mass incarceration is powerfully linked to economic inequality in the United States 3. Describe the political
economy of the corrections sector, including powerful players and interests as well as underrepresented ones 4. Identify seven problems encountered in the criminal justice sector as well as the policies, regulations, and organizational factors pertinent to them 5. Develop Red Flag Alerts for each of the seven problems at the micro advocacy level . Identify policy resources available to policy advocates with respect to each of the seven core problems 7. Identify strategies for moving from micro policy advocacy
to mezzo and macro policy advocacy in the criminal justice sector . Engage the eight challenges in the multilevel policy empowerment framework in the criminal justice sector Many policy makers and
advocates are reconsidering the harshness of the American penal system that places far more people in jails than any other industrialized nation. American prisons hold 22% of all incarcerated persons in the
world even though Americans make up only 4.6% of the worlds population (Lussenhop, 2016). With many competing domestic and international priorities, many politicians on both sides of the aisle are
looking for ways to cut the costs of running jails and other institutions that house roughly 2.3 million inmates in the United States. If a growing number of prison abolitionists want to terminate all prisons,
other critics seek incremental reductions of inmates as well as prison reforms (Arrieta-Kenna, 2018). If the United States does reconfigure its penal system so that it focuses on rehabilitating its prisoners and
downsizing prisons, social workers will likely become a larger part of its workforce. As Gumz (2004) noted, The tenets of social work practicethe innate dignity of the individual, self-determination of the
client, confidentiality, moral neutrality, and social justice were, and are, challenged by a criminal justice system that values order, control, and punishment (p. 451). As you read this chapter, reflect on ways that social workers can engage in addressing the seven core problems of the policy advocacy
framework in the criminal justice sector. Developing an Empowering Perspective about Criminal Justice
